


hate this feeling (come close to me)

by TheThirteenthHour



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Felix being a tiny bit emotionally vulnerable??, Gen, Hand holding (GASP), M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Protectiveness, Sharing a Bed, can be read as romantic or platonic, implied Azure Moon spoilers, more like sharing the tent floor but you know, pre-Enbarr battle comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22579561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirteenthHour/pseuds/TheThirteenthHour
Summary: The eve of the assault on Enbarr brings up more than enough worries to seek each other out.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 69





	hate this feeling (come close to me)

Felix has half a mind to point his sword at Sylvain. The cover of dark, at the edge of the war’s decisive battle, is not the time or place to rustle a tent so suspiciously, and Sylvain knows this. He’s slinking around for one reason or another—no, surely just the one reason—and Felix doesn’t want much to do with it. Not now. Not with the Sword of Moralta in his hands. Not when he knows he won’t sleep tonight.

“What?” Felix hisses, plunking his rag back in oil. He’d rather be left to his morbid thoughts, polishing his final memento of his father by candlelight.

Sylvain pokes his head into his tent, inviting himself in like always with only performative shame. “Hey, uh. Can I hide out here for a bit?”

“Who could you have possibly fucked out here.”

“You wound me,” he laughs, grinning like the miscreant he is. “It’s not always about a girl.”

“Then?”

He shrugs.

Sylvain doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. He keeps it locked up tight and coated in countless layers of pretense and false charm, to the point that it’s nearly impossible to tell when he is being sincere. Even Ingrid can’t tell, and Felix gets too frustrated to try. But there’s some attempt at honesty in Sylvain’s uncertainty—or, his unwillingness to speak—and Felix can’t push him away.

He goes back to his father’s sword and says nothing when Sylvain sits against his back.

The tent is already small, barely tall enough for him to sit and polish and only wide enough to tolerably fit two people. Three would be a stretch. Four, impossible. But Sylvain’s presence, regardless of the reason for it, makes the space less suffocating. Felix doesn’t hold the sword so tightly.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” Felix asks. “We march for Enbarr tomorrow.”

“Mercedes gave me the clear. Even if I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll be fine.”

Felix scoffs. If any of them don’t sleep tonight, he’d prefer it be himself. The more alert they are, the less he’ll worry. “You’d better be.”

Sylvain leans back, pushing him forward, condensing all his irritation and fear into a nauseating point in his stomach. “Aw, worried about me?”

“I’m just not risking my life out there for you more than I need to.”

“Got it, got it… Ingrid won’t let me die anyway.”

The tip of the blade catches the rag and slices a hole clean through. He huffs—at the rag, at Ingrid, at Sylvain, at everything. “No, she’d just get herself killed trying to protect you.”

“So would you. But you’re not dying without me, right? And I’m not letting either of you die. See how that goes?”

“Stop being so nonchalant about it.” He means to be sharp and absolute. He sounds haunted instead.

Sylvain lets the full weight of his body rest against him, and he whispers, “Alright.”

Part of him wants to snap and spit words, with less tact and less purpose than Ingrid. He doesn’t know what stops him, but he recognizes that if Sylvain had just kept his mouth shut or even talked about anything else, he wouldn’t have a death grip on this sword now.

The silence helps, but all he can think is that he can’t end up polishing the Lance of Ruin or Lúin like this, like they’re all he has left to remember them by.

There are footsteps outside his tent, light and quick, and Ingrid’s voice follows. “Felix? Have you seen—”

Sylvain bolts upright, taking his weight and comfort with him.

Ingrid frowns at Sylvain from the entrance of his tent. “Mercedes has been looking for you.”

Sylvain groans. “It’s gonna taste gross…”

She enters like a quiet storm, shoves a vial into Sylvain’s hands, and drops like a spear beside them, sharp and commanding. “ _Drink._ ”

“You said she gave you the clear,” Felix says.

“Yeah, after I drink this,” he mutters. “She wasn’t done with it yet.”

“Ridiculous…”

“You were housing a fugitive, Felix,” Ingrid says. She sounds like Sylvain, trying to make light of a situation she normally wouldn’t.

He can’t meet her with any humor of his own, so he says nothing and focuses on polishing.

“Ugh,” Sylvain says, slouching against his back once more. “There. Happy?”

“Yes,” she says. “The last thing we need is any potential infection hurting you.”

“You ladies worry too much about me. It’s gonna take more than a wound like this to take a man like me down.”

Felix can hear the wink in his voice. He almost groans.

“ _Sylvain_.”

“What? I wasn’t even—”

“Yes you were.”

“You two are obnoxious.”

They relent. Ingrid leans against his shoulder. Sylvain relaxes his weight. They let him polish in silence.

Here, at least, with them so close and in a space so small he can almost delude himself into forgetting the war and his father and his brother—he feels like they can’t be taken from him. He wishes that were the case on the battlefield.

He tries not to think. He focuses on the flicker of candlelight, the glint on the blade, the slight but steady feel of their breathing. He matches his own to theirs and tries to memorize them.

“You’ll both stay nearby?” Sylvain asks.

Ingrid nestles herself in the space where his back meets Sylvain’s, closer than he thought she could. It’s not unwelcome. _She’s_ not unwelcome. But he knows her perspective on these matters, and it curdles in his stomach as well as his own. “I’ll protect you two. You clearly can’t be trusted with yourself,” she tells Sylvain lightly.

“Yeah, yeah…”

Felix sits up, hoping to jostle them out of whatever state of comfort they managed to find with him. Neither of them pulls away. “Just don’t be idiots and get yourselves killed.”

“He’s worried about us,” Sylvain teases.

He huffs.

“We’ll make it through,” Ingrid says. She places a hand on Felix’s shoulder, elbow raised enough that it hides her eyes from him.

“We will,” Sylvain says gently.

They have to.

He sees Sylvain wrap a hand around her other wrist, he feels Ingrid relax against them, and he finds himself aching for something they can’t give each other. All the promises in the world mean nothing in the face of such an uncertain future.

She lowers her arms. She’s frowning, but not because Sylvain still holds her. She twists her wrist free only to grip his hand, and she blindly offers her other hand to Felix.

He drapes the rag over his knee and accepts.

None of them say a word.

It takes too much conscious thought to relax his body, to rest the sword on his bedroll, to lean his head against theirs. To breathe. So sleep, though brief, comes suddenly. He doesn’t know what wakes him. A bird, maybe, or the wind whistling loudly. He reaches for the sword before he even opens his eyes, heart pounding in his ears. Beyond the tent flaps, he sees the professor calmly carrying a torch to bed, and the boar trailing behind. It takes a few minutes of silence to convince himself they’re not in danger.

He slows his breath, relishing this moment with them for just a little longer, before he sits up and wakes them.

Ingrid’s hand flinches in his tight grasp. Sylvain’s warmth vanishes from his back. Felix wants to apologize, but all he says is, “We need to sleep.”

“Fuck, I was,” Sylvain mutters.

Ingrid doesn’t let go of them to rub at her eyes. “He’s right…”

Sylvain laughs, bitterly. It reminds him of how Sylvain would talk whenever Miklan came up, before and after. “Don’t think I’m falling asleep in my tent tonight…” His weight and warmth return, as does his insatiable tone. “Keep me company?”

Ingrid beats him to it. “You’re disgusting.”

“Not like that,” he says lightly. “Though I’m flattered you thought I might’ve meant it that way.”

Ingrid shoves him just as Felix says, “ _Shut up_.”

Sylvain laughs again. It sounds real this time. “Do you remember when we were kids?” he continues, leaning against them once more. They don’t push him away. “And… we’d all beg to stay with Dimitri, and we’d all stay up too late doing, I don’t even remember what. But we were small enough we could all fit in his bed, and we’d fall asleep there. And we didn’t have a care in the world, ‘cause we didn’t get how anything worked yet…”

Felix lets go of Ingrid. He sheathes the sword, puts away the oil, stuffs the rag where it belongs, and somehow doesn’t spit, “You can’t go back in time.” He should know. He can’t undo his father’s death or Glenn’s, or Dimitri’s. “Don’t start living there.”

“I’m not,” he says plainly. “I just…” He chuckles. Nervously, it seems. But with Sylvain’s back to him, he can’t confirm it. Ingrid isn’t facing him either. There’s nothing she can tell him, though she is still holding Sylvain’s hand in her lap, with both hands. “I dunno, is it… weird to ask for that? Just in case…”

“Not just in case,” she says sternly.

“Fine, then… just so I… sleep better. So just-in-case doesn’t happen. How’s that?”

He fixes the back of Sylvain’s head with a glare. “The _boar_?”

Sylvain shrugs. He doesn’t even look at Ingrid. “Just you two…”

Ingrid holds herself like she’s considering it.

Felix feels like he can’t let them out of his sight. “Just don’t interfere with my sleep.”

He thinks that’s a smile on the corner of Sylvain’s mouth. Sylvain leans closer to Ingrid and says quietly, “He _is_ worried about me.”

He rolls his eyes.

She laughs softly. “He’ll kick you out if you keep talking.”

“Nah.” Sylvain meets his gaze, a glint in his eye that’s both grateful and something else Felix can’t place. “He loves me.”

“Fuck off.”

His sharpness deters neither of them, and they leave to bring back their things. The few minutes they’re gone are the loneliest he’s felt since his father was killed.

He doesn’t tell them so. He doesn’t face them when Sylvain sets his bedroll next to him, when Ingrid takes the opposite end of the tent, or when they lay their lances somewhere within reach just in case. He doesn’t admit that he prefers it when they take up the remaining space in his tent and when they don’t leave him alone. He keeps those things locked up tight, coated in anger and belligerence, determined not to fail them.

“We’ll make it through,” Ingrid whispers.

It’s the last thing any of them say before he falls asleep.

He wakes before he needs to, the rays of dawn reaching through the fabric of his tent. He sees the silhouette of Sylvain’s empty tent beyond the wall he faces and hears the professor quietly up and about. He’s still tired, but he’s more rested than he’s felt in weeks.

He listens to Sylvain breathe, but strains for too long to hear Ingrid.

She’s alive. He knows that. And she’s still in the tent. He would’ve woken up otherwise. But he can’t bear not checking for very long.

He can’t see her face beyond Sylvain, but her hand is clenched tight over his heart.

He wants to reach for her, for the connection and for comfort—hers or his own, he isn’t sure. But he hasn’t known how to reach her for years. Not since Glenn was killed.

She lifts her head and whispers, “Felix?”

Her voice is hoarse with sleep, and more soothing than he expects. He almost stays quiet in the hopes that she’ll call him again, but he wants to reach back however he can. “Yeah?”

“Oh… I wasn’t sure you were awake.”

Sylvain takes a long breath, but his eyes stay shut.

“Just now,” he says quietly, watching the steady rise and fall of Sylvain’s chest and Ingrid’s hand atop him. “Did… you sleep alright?”

“Better than I have in a while…”

“Me too…”

He needs them. He doesn’t know why he remembers so sharply, but everything within him aches for them in ways he’s not sure he ever has. He aches for his father, for Glenn, even for the boar Dimitri has become.

And he wonders if Ingrid knows this. She opens her hand for him when he needs it most, and he takes it because she gets it. More than anyone, she gets it, and he hates that she does. They fight for the same thing, but she was never supposed to be a shield.

“We’re keeping each other alive,” she says.

He grips her tightly and curls against Sylvain’s side, and he does his damnedest to believe her. “Well, I trust you on that more than him.”

She rubs her thumb over his. “He does have a worse record than I do…”

Sylvain shifts in his sleep, like he knows they’re talking about him.

“That doesn’t mean you’re not bad about it too,” he says.

“And you?” she asks calmly. “Do you mean to say you haven’t put yourself in danger to protect others? That you haven’t scared us too?”

He tightens his grip. His hand hurts. “That’s my _job_ , Ingrid.”

“And what of my job?” she counters, beginning to lose her patience. She frowns at him over Sylvain’s chest, but she isn’t angry. She looks how he feels, worried and, in a way, betrayed. They don’t trust each other to live. “What of Sylvain’s?”

“You don’t owe me any protection,” he spits.

“Of course not, we’re—”

“ _Whyyy_ ,” Sylvain says.

It’s only when Ingrid looks at Sylvain that Felix realizes they were holding each other so desperately that their hands were shaking.

They don’t let go of each other.

“For fuck’s sake,” Sylvain continues, rubbing his face and resting his hand over theirs. “You’re always fighting about being the same just, shut up and sleep for three more minutes.” He tugs Ingrid down to his chest, and she looks too surprised to fight him. “ _My_ job, apparently, is to keep you two from trying to out-protect each other so bad you end up dying anyway.”

She huffs but doesn’t argue.

Neither does he.

Sylvain drums his fingers against their hands. “You know,” he starts, and already Felix doesn’t like his tone, “everyone probably heard you guys. Should be funny to see how they ask about our lovers’ spat later.”

They both tell him to shut up, but they link their fingers around Sylvain’s anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Felix why are you so difficult lol
> 
> * * *
> 
> I do love hearing from my readers and chatting with you or answering your questions! So if you want to leave a comment and don't know what to say:
> 
> \- Quote a line/excerpt you liked! (please do, I love seeing what sticks with people)  
> \- Drop an emoji like 💬 - Felix, silly boy, just talk about your feelings  
> \- 😘 - Bless Sylvain and how easily he lightens the mood  
> \- 🦄 - Ingrid. Just Ingrid, she's good and just wants her boys safe  
> \- 👏 - Let them stay safe with each other!!  
> \- 💛 - Let them all be vulnerable with each other...  
> \- 🤝 - lewd handholding  
> \- 💕 - Extra kudos  
> \- 😍 - I loved this!  
> \- 💌 - Thanks for sharing
> 
> If you want, you can [reblog on tumblr here](https://write-nonsense-by-the-ream.tumblr.com/post/190672778423/sylvain-leans-back-pushing-him-forward), or [retweet here](https://twitter.com/thirteenthhr/status/1225251107070468097).
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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